Black Skies

July 8, 2013
Insp. Sigurdur Óli takes center stage in Indridason’s solid eighth Inspector Erlendur novel (after 2012’s Outrage), providing all the Nordic bleakness and moral ambiguity of Reykjavik police colleague Erlendur Sveinsson, with a trace of stolid conservatism added to sour the mix. Sigurdur Óli’s great talent is to doggedly follow a trail, even at the expense of the relationships in his life and his own ethics. When someone fatally bludgeons Lína Thorgrímsdóttir with a baseball bat in her apartment, Lína, like most Indridason victims, turns out to be far from innocent; she has tried to blackmail friends of Sigurdur Óli with photos of group sex. Meanwhile, a Reykjavik bum with a shattered and nearly incoherent personality tries to tell the inspector about a terrible crime. Indridason may be guilty of gratuitous characterization in a search for nuance, but the pathos is often moving, and Sigurdur Óli proves a worthy detective, if not so great a human being.